UvA-DARE (Digital Academic Repository) Introduction: Traces of Terror, Signs of Trauma van der Laarse, R.; Mazzucchelli, F.; Reijnen, C. Publication date 2014 Document Version Author accepted manuscript Published in Versus : quaderni di studi semiotici Link to publication Citation for published version (APA): van der Laarse, R., Mazzucchelli, F., & Reijnen, C. (2014). Introduction: Traces of Terror, Signs of Trauma. Versus : quaderni di studi semiotici, 119, 3-19. General rights It is not permitted to download or to forward/distribute the text or part of it without the consent of the author(s) and/or copyright holder(s), other than for strictly personal, individual use, unless the work is under an open content license (like Creative Commons). Disclaimer/Complaints regulations If you believe that digital publication of certain material infringes any of your rights or (privacy) interests, please let the Library know, stating your reasons. In case of a legitimate complaint, the Library will make the material inaccessible and/or remove it from the website. Please Ask the Library: https://uba.uva.nl/en/contact, or a letter to: Library of the University of Amsterdam, Secretariat, Singel 425, 1012 WP Amsterdam, The Netherlands. You will be contacted as soon as possible. UvA-DARE is a service provided by the library of the University of Amsterdam (https://dare.uva.nl) Download date:28 Sep 2021 Francesco Mazzucchelli, Rob van der Laarse and Carlos Reijnen1 Introduction Traces of Terror, Signs of Trauma Abstract The article introduces a collection of articles about the spatialization processes of memory of war in contemporary Europe. It is divided in three parts. The first part proposes a transdisciplinary perspective, which includes semiotics, to tackle the relations between space, heritage and cultural memory and to analyse memory narratives conveyed by places. An approach based on the investigation of “terrorscapes” (places with a high density of traces) is proposed. The second part delves on the notion of terrorscapes, focusing on the meaning of “terror” and on the shift of paradigm in European politics of memory after 1989. The third part deals with the European space of memory, questioning the possibility of construction of a shared European memory narrative on XX centuries wars. Last paragraph summarizes the contributions of the volume. Keywords cultural memory, spatial turn, Europe, places of memory, war 1. Space and memory: toward a transdisciplinary approach After a recently published special issue devoted to the “politics of memory” (TraMe 2013), Versus delves again into the rich field of memory studies, this time reversing the approach. While on that volume the selection of contributions was “methodological” (how semiotics can deal with such concepts as collective and cultural memory and what kind of analysis it can produce), this time we opted for a thematic criterion, choosing a subject that is at the same time theoretical and analytical. We now focus on the relation between space and memory, namely the symbolic dimension in the processes of spatialization of collective memories of war in Europe. The objects under investigation in the articles here presented are museums, memorials, monuments, exhibitions, mediatic representation of spaces and places but also landscapes or simply segments of spatial environments that play a role in the shared reminiscences of a community. Though, in this volume, the topic will not be tackled solely from a semiotic approach but from different theoretical angles, including also literary and cultural studies, forensic archaeology, history, cultural geography, museology. This multiplication of points of view is not aimed at offering 1 Francesco Mazzucchelli, University of Bologna [email protected]; Rob van der Laarse, UvA University of Amsterdam, VU University Amsterdam [email protected]; Carlos Reijnen, UvA University of Amsterdam [email protected] 00020.Rob_van_Laarse.indd020.Rob_van_Laarse.indd 3 119/09/149/09/14 116:316:31 4 FRANCESCO MAZZUCCHELLI, ROB VAN DER LAARSE AND CARLOS REINEN a mere collection of diverse possibilities of handling these themes, but rather at finding and producing a common ground of communication and translation among perspectives which sometimes perceive each other as distant and not compatible. Memory studies are, by definition, interdisciplinary, because of the complexity and multi-layering of the processes involved in collective and cultural memory: this volume aspires to stimulate a trans-disciplinary dialogue and debate able to produce new sets of adequate tools that prove adequate to investigate the complex ties linking collective remembrances and the spatial environment in which they are expressed or manifested. Hence, such miscellaneous positions have, in this issue, a lot in common. Two main elements, as said, emerge: the spatial approach and the focus on the semiotic/symbolic aspects. The spatial approach is not a novelty: in the last decades, also the field of memory studies has been experiencing a “spatial turn”.2 From Pierre Nora’s lieux de memoire (although his notion did not exclusively refer to the spatial environment), the practices of mise en scene of collective memory in public spaces of commemoration (such as museums, memorials, monuments, etc.) have been object of study from different approaches. Moreover, places of memory, museums, memorials and monuments are becoming more and more a domain of struggle among competing political and ideological interests, in which politics of memory is expressed and applied and where the “official version” of the representation of past and identity is at stake. Memory which is today represented and recalled in such places is often traumatic, being linked to war or occurrences of political, cultural and ethnic violence. If it’s true that collective memory is also an ideological (auto-) representation of identity, the role of the so called “traumatic memories” in processes of representations of collective identities seems to be predominant today. Additionally, places of memory are also a collective and cultural “trend”, as testified by the increasing practices of heritage tourism and mediatisation of memories in the age of visualization and digitalization. In this volume we delimited the field, asking the authors to focus expressly on a specific class of “memory places” that, following the conceptualization by Rob van der Laarse (van der Laarse 2013a), have been named named terrorscapes, to pinpoint those places “where terror, political or state-perpetrated violence has happened or was prepared – seeking to understand both what happened as well as how the space- times of terror are collectively remembered or forgotten”.3 Indeed, more than anywhere else, the dynamics of spatialisation of memory have led 2 As reference to the relation between space and collective memory see J. Assmann (1992), A. Assmann. (1999); Nora (1984). For a phenomenological approach, see Ricoeur (2000); for an interesting reflection on the spatial turn on historiography (and some suggestion of disciplinary contaminations), see Schlögel 2003). 3 From the website of Terrorscapes project: http://www.terrorscapes.org/about-us.html 00020.Rob_van_Laarse.indd020.Rob_van_Laarse.indd 4 119/09/149/09/14 116:316:31 INTRODUCTION 5 to conflicts and reactions when affecting sites where historical events of mass violence did actually take place, transforming ordinary landscapes into terrorscapes. The notion of terroscapes recalls a debate currently taking place in semiotics as well: recently, in some semiotic surveys, a distinction has been made between ex novo-built memorials and memorials built in sites of massacre, terror or violence (Violi, 2012; Mazzucchelli, 2010; see also Pezzini 2011). Patrizia Violi, introduced the notion of trauma site in semiotics to indicate those places that are “characterized by a specific semiotic trait: an indexical link to past traumatic events” (Violi, 2012: 37) and that “exist factually as material testimonies of the violence and horror that took place there” (ibidem). The notions of trauma site and terrorscape, as defined respectively by Violi and van der Laarse, have several affinities with concepts as traumascape (Tumarkin 2005), heritagescape (Garden 2006), memoryscape (Appadurai 1996; Nuttall 1992; Phillips & Reyes 2011). Terrorscapes are, then, places with a “high density” of historical traces, which are susceptible of being monumentalized, transformed, restored, dilapidated, destroyed: in other words, memorialized or consigned to oblivion in different ways. A terrorscape is also a site that is itself a trace, a material testimony of the violence that took place there. These considerations raise questions – relevant from a semiotic perspective – about the symbolic status of such spatial signs and texts and, more generally, on the relations between a semiotics of culture and memory (Demaria 2006, Lorusso 2013) and a semiotics of space.4 The mechanisms of “translations” between the discourse of history, the discourse of memory (Nora 1984, 1989, Ricoeur 2000) and other forms of “discourse” in related interdiscoursive domains (such as politics, mass media, international justice, religion, academia...); the role of collective traumas in shaping cultural memories; the semiotic potential of space as a medium to express, but also “record”, transmit and communicate, shared memories; the way social practices and performances (of commemoration, tourism, education) transform and re-semantise places of memory: